Home accidents and influencing factors Ev kazalari ve etkileyen faktörler

Home accidents are not registered and evaluated sufficiently and regularly in Turkey but it is known that it is probably the most common type of accident for Turkey. The aim of this study was to define home accidents that occurred in last six months and influencing factors in Izmir, Turkey. This cross sectional study was carried out in a slum settlement area, Inonu District, Izmir. The population was 10.207 in 2003 and there were 1.765 households. Sample size was 331 households. The data was collected from 5 strata on sub districts and interviews were conducted face to face. In this research 1.332 people living in 326 houses, which were apartments (47.2%) and slum settlements (52.8%), were reached. The prevalence of home accidents in the last 6 months was 10.9% (145 cases) among the participants. The most frequent type of home accidents were falls (30.3%), including falling from high (8 cases) and cuts (29.7%). There were also severe accidents such as electrical shock (4 cases) and fire (3 cases). Only 30% of the cases applied to a health institution and 3 of them (2.1%) were hospitalized. Nine cases resulted in disability, which gives a rate of 7 per thousand, and there was no fatality. Affecting factors for home accidents were more common in women (14.5%) compared to men (7.3%, p:0.001). There were more home accidents in people under age 5 (28.8%) compared to the other ages (9.2%) (p:0.000). Age also influenced, the type of the accident; 0-4 age group has more falls and hits (71.9%) than other injuries than group of age 15 and above (39.8%) (p:0.003). In logistic regression analyses age, gender, and house type remained independent risk factors for home accidents. OR of being under 5 years old was 4.2 (95% CI 2.6-6.7); OR of being female was 2.2 (95% CI 1.5-3.1) and OR for living in an apartment was 1.5 (95% CI 1.04-2.2) for home accidents. Home accidents are very common for women and children. There should be relevant measures taken regarding the risk factors by the primary care workers by visiting the houses. Surveillance system should be set up to detect these accidents within the framework of environmental health care